


things change; they stay the same

by theelusiveflamingo



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Aerys is a walking trigger warning, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Sad Targaryen Feelings, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-20
Updated: 2014-01-20
Packaged: 2018-01-09 10:54:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1145124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theelusiveflamingo/pseuds/theelusiveflamingo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her family is beset by illnesses of all types.  Rhaella takes care of them in whatever ways they need.  She’s a good daughter, and she has no choice but to be a good sister. Written for gameofshipschallenges</p>
            </blockquote>





	things change; they stay the same

**Author's Note:**

> As this is about Aerys II Targaryen, trigger warnings for incest, rape, and anything else you might associate with the dude.

With Father too sick to get up from the couch and Aerys… _Aerys_ , Rhaella checks herself in the mirror carefully every morning to see if anything looks wrong with her.  Nothing is  The circles around her eyes get no darker than they already are, and her skin, though still so Targaryen pale the sun doesn’t even try to give her a bit of a tan, hasn’t faded like Aerys’s or like Father’s.

She’ll have to be the strong one, then, so she defers her college acceptance and tells her friends she can’t come over on the weekends.  She takes care of Father and Aerys instead, and every night she makes sure to slip the hook through the eye of the lock on her door.  The paint on the doorframe is peeling in one spot and the wood is battered there.  It’s not the first lock she’s had on her door.

And then Father is back in the hospital, and the doctors talk of hospice care.  Rhaella would love to hide under a pillow while they talk the way she does at night sometimes, but she can’t, because she is the only one Father has left to listen.

The house is dark when she returns home from the first visiting hours. In other families a dark house means no one’s home, but Aerys is always home, always in every room even though he doesn’t leave the second floor.  His presence is everywhere like a dampness that tingles at her hairline and makes her heart beat hard like it did when Joanna would come over and they’d put on music and dance for hours. 

Now she leaves the house quiet and dark so as not to startle her brother, and gets to work grilling a chicken breast and opening up a can of white kidney beans.  Aerys only eats pale foods.  She doesn’t bother making anything for herself.  It’s best to bring food to Aerys on an empty stomach.

She knocks softly at his closed door before opening it.  She’s started to wonder whether one day she’ll find a body instead of a brother.  That would be sad, but also maybe it wouldn’t be.

Aerys is lying on his back, looking up at the glowing stars they had stuck up on the ceiling together when they were little.

“Here’s dinner,” she says, placing the plate on his dresser and stacking up a few old ones.  She’s been neglectful of her duty, but then again, other girls’ duties didn’t involve visiting their dying fathers in the hospital, and they didn’t involve _this._

“Where’d you go?”  Aerys sits up and reaches out his hand. 

It would be nice, Rhaella thinks, if she could just turn and leave. 

Instead she sits at the edge of his bed, her back to the brother who used to look so much like her.  She remembers him running his fingernails, long even back then, over the pages of his test prep book.  He was going to finish college and go to business school.  He was going to continue in Grandfather Aegon’s footsteps, Father always said, and fix everything wrong that had happened to the Targaryens since Grandfather’s footsteps had led them to ruin.  (Foosteps were easier to blame than genetics, Mother had mumbled, but she wasn’t around to mumble anymore.)

Now he runs the nails over her jawbone softly, then tugs at her hair.  She knows how to stop herself from shuddering on the outside.  Instead her insides clench up and her blood feels like heavy cold ice, but there’s nothing for Aerys to notice, so it’s all right.

“Father’s back in the hospital,” Rhaella says.  “You should come downstairs, Aerys.  You should come visit him before he—”

“He’s going to die?”

“He misses you.  Come visit with me tomorrow.”

“What happens to the Targaryens when he dies?  There will be just us left.”  Aerys tugs her hair again and she finally turns to face him.

“I don’t know what happens,” Rhaella says quietly.  It’s almost like a normal conversation.

“You won’t leave me, right?” Aerys said.  “My sweet sister wouldn’t leave me, _ever_.  Right?”  Through the long, greasy hair that falls over his face, Rhaella can see tears in his eyes.  Aerys gets to cry whenever he likes.

Rhaella shakes her head.  Sometimes it’s easier not to use words.

He reaches out for her again, with both hands this time.

It’s not just the shade of her skin and the circles under her eyes.  Some other things have stayed the same throughout everything, too: the way the taste of Aerys’s lips and tongue makes her mouth water like she’s going to puke; the way his nails make him fumble for so long at the button on her jeans she winds up doing it for him just to get it over with; the way his tears burn hot and dry cold on her cheeks and neck; the way he says _I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry_ as he rolls her face-up onto his mattress, and during, but never after.

“Can you bring me my plate?” Aerys asks when it is finished. 

“I put it on your dresser.”  Rhaella is always surprised that she can remember how to say things, make sentences, after it happens.  She expects that her brain would want to scrub itself clean and pretend that fresh starts were things that happened to Rhaella Targaryen.

“I can’t get up,” Aerys says.  “I don’t want to get hurt.  Father’s so weak he got sick and he’s going to die.   I could die too, you know.  I could get hurt and die.  Dying young could run in the family.”

Rhaella gets the plate and puts it on his blanket.

“Is it all white?” Aerys asks.  “Because the coloring in food could be poison—”

“Why don’t you turn on the damn light and look for yourself?”  Rhaella’s voice raises so high and loud so fast it breaks and she is crying on the last word.

“Did you just _yell at me_?”  Aerys has switched from ranting to his dangerous soft voice, and he props himself up on an elbow to look at her.  “Did my sweet sister get mad at the only family she has left?”

“No, no.”  Rhaella bends over next to the bed and kisses Aerys on his bearded cheek. “I’m sorry.  Here, look.”  She points at the plate.  “I cut up your chicken so you don’t have to use a knife, look, see?”  She kisses his cheek again and tucks his hair behind his ear so he can eat.  His lips are quivering and his chest is rising from either rage or panic, but he reaches down to the plate and takes a cube of chicken in his fingers.  “I’m sorry.”

She waits quietly for a while, watching him pluck chicken and beans from the plate with his fingers, before he tells her she can leave.  He needs to think, he says.  About Father, and about everything.

Rhaella doesn’t waste her time being relieved.

She remembers something else that’s still the same as she walks carefully to the shower.  The words _I’m sorry._ She still means them, even if Aerys might not.

 


End file.
